Boozy UES Teens Kept Swanky Hotel Afloat, Says Accused Hotel Bully

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — If it weren’t for an Upper East Side teen and his youthful drinking buddies, an ultra-luxury five-star Madison Avenue hotel would be toast.

At least that’s what Theodore Weintraub — the underaged drinker previously accused of defaming a luxury Upper East Side hotel with outrageous protests and demonstrations for weeks over the summer — contends.

According to the new court filing, Weintraub is not only an underaged drinker.

Weintraub argues he’s also an underaged whistleblower — and that the hotel will stop at nothing to silence him from speaking out against claims of rampant teen drinking at the hotel, concocted as a get-rich-quick scheme to buoy pandemic losses.

In a new counterclaim filed against The Mark Hotel, Theodore Weindtraub makes claims that the hotel actually had full knowledge of his drunken escapades, and that it was an integral part of the hotel’s path to financial recovery after the pandemic.

The luxury hotel, where A-list guests famously lodge and party prior to the Met Gala, sued Weintraub over the summer, claiming that he had spent over a month harassing staff and guests with a crew of paid kids to shout his outrageous claims.

Weintraub’s extracurricular activity, which the suit said would sometimes last all night, was in response to the hotel’s total ban on him in 2021 after “increasingly aggressive” behavior when hotel staff refused to serve him after repeatedly attempting to drink underage, according to the hotel’s lawsuit.

One employee told Patch that it was “the worst month” he ever worked and that he spotted Weintraub sitting in a black Cadillac across the street as his teenage contractors earned his pay.

Some of those claims and shouted slogans were coincidentally captured on videos taken by paparazzi of famous Jewish Canadian musician Drake exiting the hotel.

An episode of pop-culture podcast “The Toast” also recounted the protests, adding that the host’s boyfriend witnessed about six people demonstrating.

"They were saying the most random things," Claudia Oshry says. "'The Mark has mice, The Mark denies the Holocaust, the Mark supports Epstein.' Ben was like, 'How are these three things related?'"

Luxury drinks for luxury teens

The counterclaim is full of accusations: that the hotel knowingly plied teens with booze as part of a get-rich-quick scheme, and that their lawsuit and a supposed public relations effort is an attempt to silence him from going to the authorities.

Weintraub’s attorney, Leo L. Esses, told Patch that he had no comment regarding the filing.

Lawyers for The Mark did not reply to a request for comment.

According to the documents, filed earlier this month, Weintraub claims that the hotel was forced to seek “unconventional methods to increase revenue” in the fall of 2020, when the hotel had just fended off a foreclosure threat.

In addition to jacking up room rates 20 percent, Weintraub claims that the hotel — where Mehgan, The Duchess of Sussex, held a $500,000 baby shower in 2019 — “engaged in a scheme to prioritize revenue collection by serving alcohol to underage teenagers, thus disregarding the State of New York liquor laws,” reads the filing.

“The Mark either failed to verify the legal drinking age or overlooked the use of fake identification by underage teenagers,” the filing says.

One of those teens? Theodore Weintraub.

Soon, the countersuit continued, it became known in elite circles of silk-stocking district underaged teens that The Mark was the place to go to get sloshed, with the hotel happy to look the other way.

But the fancy hotel soon became concerned that one of their underaged imbibers — or their parents — would squeal to the State Liquor Authority, putting an end to their major teenaged moneymaker, and possibly their liquor license for good, the filing claims.

“The Mark decided to take an offensive stance and launch a campaign against Weintraub,” the suit reads.

Those efforts include the defamation suit filed against Weintraub in July as well as “public relations efforts” in an attempt to silence Weintraub and other teens from reporting the hotel’s misdeeds.

If I did it

In the verified answer to The Mark’s suit, Weintraub denies that he was ever banned from the hotel, but also claims that he can’t recall if a supposedly disastrous dinner with his art-collecting cardiologist father in 2021 happened or not.

Weintraub showed up to The Mark about a month after he was banned, this time on a dinner date with his father, who was immediately informed of his son’s unwelcome status, according to the original complaint.

Weintraub Jr. first begged forgiveness, then shouted accusations that the hotel was antisemitic and that staff spit in people’s foods, the lawsuit contended.

Two years later, Weintraub began his reign of terror, the hotel’s suit claims.

But even if the “alleged conduct” of Weintraub and his paid minions took place, the new filing says, it “was not severe or pervasive and/or amounted to no more than what a reasonable person would consider petty slights and trivial inconveniences”

Patch, which broke the story of the lawsuit in August, has yet to communicate with The Mark Hotel management, owners or any of its representatives —aside from speaking with employees outside the Hotel who recalled seeing the claimed defamatory actions and harassment last summer. Nor have Patch reporters seen any evidence of a so-called “public relations effort” alleged in Weintraub’s counterclaim.

After hiding out from process servers trying to deliver court documents to the accused bully, Weintraub asked a judge to toss the "petty" suit in October and for the hotel to pay for his new lawyer.

The Mark Hotel reported earlier this year that 2022 was their “strongest” year on record in terms of revenue, according to a Wall Street Journal article, with rooms averaging $1,900 per night.

According to The Mark Bar menu, at least four bottles on offer at the fancy hotel bar exceed that price, with several others costing hundreds or thousands of dollars, making it arguably financially plausible that a couple of Upper East Side teens armed with their parent’s American Express cards could have indeed been a welcome cash infusion.

Related Coverage:

• Underage Drinker Pays Protesters To Bully Lux UES Hotel: Worker, Suit
• UES Hotel Bully Hides Behind Park Ave Doormen To Dodge Suit: Lawyer
• UES Hotel Bully Asks 'Petty' Defamation Suit Be Tossed In Court Filing